by K. M. Malloy
“General, if you could refrain from barking orders at me and my staff I’d really appreciate it,” the Asian said as he glared down at Manning.
“Patel,” Manning growled, doing his best not to tilt his chin to look up at the doctor. “I need updates and I need them now. Our investors will pull the plug if they find out the place has turned into a mad house and you know damn well we can’t afford that with the budget crisis. We’re already operating on a skeleton crew as it is. We can’t even afford a security surveillance team anymore for Christ’s sake. My team has taken care of the damn kid in Manhattan who started this whole fucking circus, now what is your team going to do about cleaning up this mess?”
“Seems your team didn’t do much other than make that boy disappear.”
Manning glared at the neurologist, his beady eyes glowing under bushy eyebrows. “We did everything we could to make him tell us how to cure the virus. We had a pile of his fingernails and teeth in a mason jar and he still wouldn’t talk, but at least we still got rid of him and all traces of our project. So I repeat, what is your team going to do about this?”
“Well, that depends,” Patel said, clutching his clipboard to his chest.
“Depends on what?”
“It depends on what happens in the next few hours. If your tech guy can break the virus code, we can stage a health fair day, or whatever you want to call it. A few members of my team can go into the field and administer injections to the infected units to repress neurotransmitter production long enough for their chips to regain proper functioning again.”
“Okay,” Manning nodded. “What if tech can’t crack the virus?”
“Then we won’t be able to do anything.”
“Can’t we just take their chips out and put new ones in?”
Patel laughed. “No. The units can’t function without their chips. Their chemical balances are driven solely by the chip’s hardware. If we took them out, we’d have the same situation we have now. They’ve never had to deal with their emotions on their own, and without a synthetic neurostimulator, they’d be unable to control themselves. Besides, it takes a team of six neurobiologists working sixty hours a week over eight months to produce a new chip, plus another three months of testing to ensure it functions correctly. The production costs are astronomical, and as you said, we don’t have the budget to produce over two hundred new chips.”
“Why the hell can’t we put the uninfected units in cryo until we crack this thing?” Manning said, his size six shoes clicking on the blue tile of the hall way. “We don’t have many left as it is, and the Blue Lion Group is anxious to begin testing phase three of the experiment.”
“Hmm.” Patel dropped his clipboard to his side. “We may be able to do that, but it would take time and additional resources to up the production levels.”
“Our investors have already given more than what they originally agreed to pay. What if tech can somehow reprogram the chips? You know, to level them out or something?”
“I’m sorry sir, we can’t do that.”
“Why the hell not? Isn’t the chip designed to tell their brains to level out their emotions before they start feeling anything too strongly? Level their neuro-whatevers so they don’t get uppity?”
“It’s much more complicated than that, but in essence, yes,” Patel said. “What’s happening now is, instead of the chip producing the chemical needed to counter balance an emotion, they’re producing more of whatever it is they’re feeling. And it’s based on individual design, not external stimulation.”
“Right, so why can’t we manually counter balance?”
“We tried that in some of the units,” Patel said, motioning to the lab room behind the Plexiglas. A woman lay on a table, half covered in a white sheet. A silver dart with red tail feathers protruded from her chest.
“What happened?”
“That one there,” Patel said, pointing to the woman on the table, “that one was attempt one hundred three. Every time we told the chip to counter what it was already telling the brain to produce, it went into overdrive. It started making even more neurotransmitters to increase whatever unbalanced emotion that person was already suffering from. Her blood pressure spiked to 203 over 157 when we tried to implement serotonin to calm down her anger. She was one who came in for labor and delivery four weeks ago. We hadn’t even noticed the virus then, and it still got to her during the testing of the chip in her new infant. We ended up having to put her down after she tried to suffocate the infant during nursing, and that was when we had her sedated to the gills.”
“Jesus,” Manning said, rubbing his face with his palms. “The violent ones, are they capable of murder?”
The Asian pointed to a man that looked in his early sixties laying next to the woman. “See that one? He had a Border Collie for ten years that went everywhere with him. Raised it from a puppy and doted on the thing like it was a grandchild from what our surveillance reports from Jenkins say. He beat that dog to death with his own hands. You couldn’t tell what the poor thing was when he finished with it.”
“Jesus.”
“I suggest you don’t watch the tape. Every one of your men that’s seen gruesome combat more than half their careers lost their stomachs over it.”
Manning shook his head, his thin lips pursing together. “So our only option is to destroy all of the existing G-157 chips and start over?”
“Correct.”
“What about the children in the current population? How many do we still have?”
“Around seventy or so minors are still left.”
“Can we use them for the next phase of testing?”
Patel shook his head. “The G-157 has to be installed in infancy. The original G-47 chips we started with in the sixties were implanted on adults with a five percent success rate. We could try putting the three infants we haven’t released into the population in cryo, but it’s highly unlikely they’ll survive. The units need to be at least twelve years or older to be put into cryosleep. It would make more financial sense to destroy the current infants we have rather than putting them under. And with the development of the G-175 chip, it would again make more sense to destroy all existing G-157 units and purchase new ones rather than try to salvage the old.”
“Alright,” Manning said quietly. “Keep the existing infants for now. I’ll arrange a meeting with the board to see what their decision is for all of this.”
Patel nodded and turned to go back to his lab. Manning looked at the old man behind the glass. He saw red speckles on the faded flannel shirt before a technician covered the man in a sheet to be wheeled down to the burner for disposal. “Jesus,” he whispered.
***
Jackson jumped when General Manning burst through his office door and slammed it shut, sending a small stack of papers whirling off his desk. He took a seat across from the software engineer, his strained and bloodshot eyes staring into Jackson’s.
“Well?”
Jackson took off his glasses to massage his nose. The pads had made a deep indent across the bridge of his nose from not being removed in nearly twenty four hours. “Well what?”
Calloused fists slammed on the pine desktop. “Don’t fuck with me, Jack. You know God damn well what I want to know.”
Sighing, Jackson replaced his glasses and straightened the picture of his daughter still resting next to his monitor. “Look, the kid who designed the thing was good. I’ve never seen anything like this before.”
“Are you any closer to cracking it?”
“No,” Jackson said, pursing his lips as he looked to the floor.
The General’s face went lax. A quiet hum of computers and people talking in the distance were the only audible noises in the office. Jackson could feel a dark weight begin to press on his chest as he watched the motionless general. The weight pushed down harder and harder on him, smashing his organs deep into his pelvis, restricting his breathing.
“How much time do we have before we lose the entir
e colony?” It was the first time he’d ever heard Manning speak so quietly. The softness of the general’s voice sent a cold chill down Jackson’s spine.
Jackson pursed his lips again and glanced at his computer. Beads of sweat began to drip from his forehead. He stared at the screen, his jaw clenching.
“How much time, Jack?”
Jackson closed his eyes and whispered, “sixteen hours, twenty tops.”
“I see,” the general said, his own jaw clenching as he stood to leave the office. “God help you.”
The office door shut with a soft click, and was once again left in silence.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Wednesday May 5, 2010
10:07 a.m.
Population: 217
Jenkins could feel his burning stomach flip-flopping around, the alcohol beginning to reach its eruption point within. The room spun in his double vision no matter how hard he tried to make it stable. The only thing sharp and clear in the room was the unfolded letter in his lap.
It had been his call in the beginning. It had been his call to bring them in, his call that had ruined so many. It had been his call that ate away at him over the years, that ate at his soul like a cancer and filled it with booze instead. Something had to fill that void within, and the alcohol filled him up and made him whole, at least for a little while.
He began to laugh as he stared down at the letter, began to laugh at what he knew would be the end of him. It had been his call then, but now it was going to be theirs, and his conscious would take no lesser guilt between the two.
Another rumble echoed up from his stomach and through his esophagus, the gas burning and tasting sour as the belch came through his lips.
“Oh, God.”
He tried to stand and instead toppled over, crashing down onto the coffee table and landing on the floor. He wobbled as he crawled on his hands and knees to the bathroom, the vodka he’d spilled on his shirt stinging at his nose. He stumbled once in the hall. Reflexes slow from the drowning drink, he couldn’t catch himself in time when the world took a hard jerk to the left, and he face planted onto the hardwood floor. Spitting blood from his busted lip, he got back up and found his way to the bathroom.
The water glistening back at him from the porcelain bowl reflected a hollow man with deep wrinkles and baggy eyes. When did he change? When had he gotten so old?
“Oh, God.”
His stomach clenched, and the geyser within erupted with full, burning, heavy force.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Wednesday May 5, 2010
3:14 p.m.
Population: 211
She held her head high as long strides carried her through the City Hall doors. Her sure footsteps reverberated on the old marble floors, intruding upon the silence of the building. The receptionist didn’t look up at her when she stood on the opposite side of the mahogany desk.
“I need to see the Mayor, and I need to see him now.”
“He went out of town to visit relatives,” the receptionist said.
“What? How could he leave at a time like this?”
The woman shrugged.
Aire gritted her teeth. “Where is he? How can I get a hold of him?”
“He left where he was going somewhere around here. I know it isn’t far.” The receptionist began to fumble through the mess of papers on her desk.
“Good, I’ll go to him myself then and let him know what I think about his commitment to civic duty.”
“Okay.” Unable to find the Mayor’s address on her desk, she began opening and rummaging through each drawer. “I know it’s in here somewhere.”
Aire rolled her eyes and began to search the desk herself. She placed each paper and envelope from the topsy-turvy clutter into a neat pile on the corner of the desk. She was almost to the bottom of the messy pile in Jenkins’s inbox when the color drained from her face and a dull roar raged through her ears. Her numb fingers reached for the envelope addressed to Jenkins, an emblem of a blue lion inside a circle stamped on the upper left hand corner.
“What is this?” she asked, her eyes never leaving the blue lion.
“Hmm?” the receptionist said, looking up to see what Aire was referring to. “Oh that? I don’t know. I guess it’s like a club or something. I’m not allowed to read the mail with the blue lion on it. Those are for Mayor Jenkins only.” She snatched the envelope from the girl and placed it in her drawer.
Aire began to walk backwards as the receptionist continued her search, her legs feeling like globs of rubber. Her chest felt tight and heavy. The blue lion. She struggled to take a breath, the roaring in her ears now deafening. It felt as though her intestines had jumbled themselves into thick knots. Beware the blue lion…
“Here it is,” the girl announced, holding up the paper. “I’ll write the address down for you.”
Beware the blue lion.
“No thank you,” Aire said, her tongue slow and awkward in her desertous mouth.
“You don’t want it?”
She shook her head, her throat feeling as though it were collapsing in on itself.
“Why not?”
Aire turned and forced her uncoordinated legs to run towards the door. The receptionist’s voice boomed in the empty building, calling for her as she disappeared through the massive doors.
Her calves began to sting with her quick pace. The blue lion…the blue lion. Whatever was going on in John’s Town had something to do with the blue lion, and the Mayor was in on it. Jenkins had been her last hope, but he was the enemy. She’d have to fix this on her own, and it had to be done in secret.
She slowed when she crossed Bourbon Street and saw Gary sitting alone at Maggie’s. That’s it, her mind shouted. It’s Gary, it all started with Gary. If we could just-
“I need to talk to you,” she said, leaning over the railing.
“I’m a little busy,” he growled.
“Meet me at the lake tonight at the hidden fishing rock, three am.”
He scowled back at her with a sharp look in his eyes. His voice was low, like the warning growling of a maddening dog. “We’re not supposed to go out after nine, now are we?”
She pulled her head higher and straightened her shoulders, hoping that he wouldn’t see past her façade and gaze upon the desperate, frightened girl within.
“I have a feeling you don’t care about that.”
“You’re right, I don’t care. I’ll go out when I please. What I do care about is that you’re bothering me, and I don’t like it. Now, if you don’t get out of my face in about three seconds I’m going to smash yours in, you got it?”
She stepped away from the railing, fearing to make any sudden movements around the boy. Whoever just spoke to her wasn’t Gary. This creature across the railing was something darker, something cruel and violent.
“Will you come? I need your help.”
“Yeah I guess. I could use the exercise. Now get out of here.”
“Thank you.”
“Whatever.” He turned his shoulder to her and lowered his head closer to his plate.
She paused, her palms sweating as she stared at him. A knot caught in her throat and caused her voice to strain and crack. “Where is Melissa?”
Gary flew from his chair and lunged towards the railing, his fist clenched in the air above him, cocked and ready to send his fist plowing into her like a battering ram. “I said leave!”
She turned and bolted down the street. Her pumping legs swiftly carried her far from the boy, but even at a safe distance, she still kept running.
***
Wednesday May 5, 2010
3:31 p.m.
Population: 211
Sweat dripped along his temples with the anger scorching through his body when he realized who the girl was meeting. He slowed his pace and moved closer to the trees lining the street to avoid detection. He had to watch her when they weren’t together. After the stunt she pulled with Mike he knew he had to always he had to watch her now, to m
ake sure she was behaving herself, to make sure she wasn’t gallivanting around with other guys.
He watched as she leaned in closer to Gary’s ear to whisper a secret, just as she had done to him so many times before. The scene made him sick to his stomach, and Troy’s eyes blazed when Gary nodded to her. They were planning something together, something he hadn’t been made a part of. She was out gallivanting with Gary. His girlfriend was out doing who knew what with Gary, gallivanting around with Gary.
His white knuckles clenched his backpack strap. Good thing he’d been watching, otherwise he wouldn’t have known about their little plan. They were probably going to go into the woods together. That was alright though, he told himself as he forced his rapid breathing to slow. He’d follow them there too, and then the three of them would have a nice little chat. Only two of them would leave the woods though. Maybe only one would leave the woods, he thought, a sneering smile contorting his face. Either way, they would not all return to John’s Town. He would make sure of that.
***
Wednesday May 5, 2010
4:48 p.m.
Central Control, East Wing
The cleanup crew stared intently at General Manning as he paced the floor in the briefing room. He clasped his hands behind his back and looked to the ground, only glancing on occasion at the worried eyes eager for his direction.
“Alright, comrades, here’s our situation. Four weeks ago an unknown virus infiltrated our mainframe monitoring system for the population. As you know, we located the virus source, but so far have been unable to repair the damages. The virus has infected approximately 80% of the John’s Town population. At approximately twelve hundred hours tomorrow, the infection rate will reach 100%. The Blue Lion Investment Group is extremely pissed off, but considering the details of the situation have agreed not to pull funding. However, they are requesting stage three of the Nature Versus Nurture project to be implemented immediately upon the completion of the new G-175 chip. At exactly O five hundred hours tomorrow, we will be conducting two missions, a reconnaissance, and an extermination. A special team lead by Major Jenkins will be sent to terminate the Wild Card as her superior intelligence and history of erratic behavior makes her a high risk target. A second team will salvage any remaining uninfected individuals to bring back to the lab for selective disposal. The rest of our personnel will be sent to terminate all infected individuals. That means all men, women, children.”
